-
Galileo's Error
- Foundations for a New Science of Consciousness
- Narrated by: Maxwell Caulfield
- Length: 8 hrs and 3 mins
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $15.75
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Publisher's summary
From a leading philosopher of the mind comes this lucid, provocative argument that offers a radically new picture of human consciousness - panpsychism
Understanding how brains produce consciousness is one of the great scientific challenges of our age. Some philosophers argue that consciousness is something "extra", beyond the physical workings of the brain. Others think that if we persist in our standard scientific methods, our questions about consciousness will eventually be answered. And some suggest that the mystery is so deep, it will never be solved.
In Galileo's Error, Philip Goff offers an exciting alternative that could pave the way forward. Rooted in an analysis of the philosophical underpinnings of modern science and based on the early 20th-century work of Arthur Eddington and Bertrand Russell, Goff makes the case for panpsychism, a theory which posits that consciousness is not confined to biological entities but is a fundamental feature of all physical matter - from subatomic particles to the human brain. Here is the first step on a new path to the final theory of human consciousness.
Cover image: Gold Beam Collision Recorded at STAR. Copyright Brookhaven National Laboratory (Creative Commons). Full image available at Flickr.com.
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
Determined
- A Science of Life Without Free Will
- By: Robert M. Sapolsky
- Narrated by: Kaleo Griffith
- Length: 13 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Robert Sapolsky’s Behave, his now classic account of why humans do good and why they do bad, pointed toward an unsettling conclusion: We may not grasp the precise marriage of nature and nurture that creates the physics and chemistry at the base of human behavior, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Now, in Determined, Sapolsky takes his argument all the way, mounting a brilliant (and in his inimitable way, delightful) full-frontal assault on the pleasant fantasy that there is some separate self telling our biology what to do.
-
-
Abridged - no Appendix!
- By Amazon Customer on 11-02-23
-
The Case Against Reality
- Why Evolution Hid the Truth from Our Eyes
- By: Donald Hoffman
- Narrated by: Timothy Andrés Pabon
- Length: 8 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Challenging leading scientific theories that claim that our senses report back objective reality, cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman argues that while we should take our perceptions seriously, we should not take them literally. How can it be possible that the world we see is not objective reality? And how can our senses be useful if they are not communicating the truth? Hoffman grapples with these questions and more over the course of this eye-opening work.
-
-
Don't buy - visual examples missing, no pdf
- By Richard Pickett on 08-26-19
By: Donald Hoffman
-
Putting Ourselves Back in the Equation
- Why Physicists Are Studying Human Consciousness and AI to Unravel the Mysteries of the Universe
- By: George Musser
- Narrated by: Alan Peterson
- Length: 8 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Neuroscientists have painstakingly built up an understanding of the structure of the brain. Could this help physicists understand the levels of self-organization they observe in other systems? These same physicists, meanwhile, are trying to explain how particles organize themselves into the objects around us. Could their discoveries help explain how neurons produce our conscious experience? Exploring these questions and more, George Musser tackles the extraordinary interconnections between quantum mechanics, cosmology, human consciousness, and artificial intelligence.
-
-
Strong Start, Discursive Ending
- By Oliver on 01-17-24
By: George Musser
-
Being You
- A New Science of Consciousness
- By: Anil Seth
- Narrated by: Anil Seth
- Length: 9 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What does it mean to “be you” - that is, to have a specific, conscious experience of the world around you and yourself within it? There may be no more elusive or fascinating question. Historically, humanity has considered the nature of consciousness to be a primarily spiritual or philosophical inquiry, but scientific research is now mapping out compelling biological theories and explanations for consciousness and selfhood.
-
-
Not engaging, nothing new
- By Tristan on 11-22-21
By: Anil Seth
-
Through Two Doors at Once
- The Elegant Experiment That Captures the Enigma of Our Quantum Reality
- By: Anil Ananthaswamy
- Narrated by: René Ruiz
- Length: 7 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The intellectual adventure story of the "double-slit" experiment, showing how a sunbeam split into two paths first challenged our understanding of light and then the nature of reality itself - and continues to almost 200 years later. Through Two Doors at Once celebrates the elegant simplicity of an iconic experiment and its profound reach. With his extraordinarily gifted eloquence, Anil Ananthaswamy travels around the world, through history and down to the smallest scales of physical reality we have yet fathomed. It is the most fantastic voyage you can take.
-
-
Excellent exposition of the conundrum
- By GLYNN A on 08-14-18
-
Conscious
- A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind
- By: Annaka Harris
- Narrated by: Annaka Harris
- Length: 2 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This mind-expanding dive into the mystery of consciousness is an illuminating meditation on the self, free will, and felt experience.
-
-
Perhaps a better definition?
- By Eratosthenes on 06-19-19
By: Annaka Harris
-
Determined
- A Science of Life Without Free Will
- By: Robert M. Sapolsky
- Narrated by: Kaleo Griffith
- Length: 13 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Robert Sapolsky’s Behave, his now classic account of why humans do good and why they do bad, pointed toward an unsettling conclusion: We may not grasp the precise marriage of nature and nurture that creates the physics and chemistry at the base of human behavior, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Now, in Determined, Sapolsky takes his argument all the way, mounting a brilliant (and in his inimitable way, delightful) full-frontal assault on the pleasant fantasy that there is some separate self telling our biology what to do.
-
-
Abridged - no Appendix!
- By Amazon Customer on 11-02-23
-
The Case Against Reality
- Why Evolution Hid the Truth from Our Eyes
- By: Donald Hoffman
- Narrated by: Timothy Andrés Pabon
- Length: 8 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Challenging leading scientific theories that claim that our senses report back objective reality, cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman argues that while we should take our perceptions seriously, we should not take them literally. How can it be possible that the world we see is not objective reality? And how can our senses be useful if they are not communicating the truth? Hoffman grapples with these questions and more over the course of this eye-opening work.
-
-
Don't buy - visual examples missing, no pdf
- By Richard Pickett on 08-26-19
By: Donald Hoffman
-
Putting Ourselves Back in the Equation
- Why Physicists Are Studying Human Consciousness and AI to Unravel the Mysteries of the Universe
- By: George Musser
- Narrated by: Alan Peterson
- Length: 8 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Neuroscientists have painstakingly built up an understanding of the structure of the brain. Could this help physicists understand the levels of self-organization they observe in other systems? These same physicists, meanwhile, are trying to explain how particles organize themselves into the objects around us. Could their discoveries help explain how neurons produce our conscious experience? Exploring these questions and more, George Musser tackles the extraordinary interconnections between quantum mechanics, cosmology, human consciousness, and artificial intelligence.
-
-
Strong Start, Discursive Ending
- By Oliver on 01-17-24
By: George Musser
-
Being You
- A New Science of Consciousness
- By: Anil Seth
- Narrated by: Anil Seth
- Length: 9 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What does it mean to “be you” - that is, to have a specific, conscious experience of the world around you and yourself within it? There may be no more elusive or fascinating question. Historically, humanity has considered the nature of consciousness to be a primarily spiritual or philosophical inquiry, but scientific research is now mapping out compelling biological theories and explanations for consciousness and selfhood.
-
-
Not engaging, nothing new
- By Tristan on 11-22-21
By: Anil Seth
-
Through Two Doors at Once
- The Elegant Experiment That Captures the Enigma of Our Quantum Reality
- By: Anil Ananthaswamy
- Narrated by: René Ruiz
- Length: 7 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The intellectual adventure story of the "double-slit" experiment, showing how a sunbeam split into two paths first challenged our understanding of light and then the nature of reality itself - and continues to almost 200 years later. Through Two Doors at Once celebrates the elegant simplicity of an iconic experiment and its profound reach. With his extraordinarily gifted eloquence, Anil Ananthaswamy travels around the world, through history and down to the smallest scales of physical reality we have yet fathomed. It is the most fantastic voyage you can take.
-
-
Excellent exposition of the conundrum
- By GLYNN A on 08-14-18
-
Conscious
- A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind
- By: Annaka Harris
- Narrated by: Annaka Harris
- Length: 2 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This mind-expanding dive into the mystery of consciousness is an illuminating meditation on the self, free will, and felt experience.
-
-
Perhaps a better definition?
- By Eratosthenes on 06-19-19
By: Annaka Harris
-
The Strange Order of Things
- Life, Feeling, and the Making of Cultures
- By: Antonio Damasio
- Narrated by: Steve West, Antonio Damasio
- Length: 9 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Strange Order of Things is a pathbreaking investigation into homeostasis, the condition that regulates human physiology within the range that makes possible not only the survival but also the flourishing of life. Antonio Damasio makes clear that we descend biologically, psychologically, and even socially from a long lineage that begins with single living cells; that our minds and cultures are linked by an invisible thread to the ways and means of ancient unicellular life and other primitive life-forms.
-
-
Homeostasis and Metabolism give self awareness
- By Gary on 03-22-18
By: Antonio Damasio
-
The Deep History of Ourselves
- The Four-Billion-Year Story of How We Got Conscious Brains
- By: Joseph LeDoux
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 11 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Renowned neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux digs into the natural history of life on earth to provide a new perspective on the similarities between us and our ancestors in deep time. This pause-resisting survey of the whole of terrestrial evolution sheds new light on how nervous systems evolved in animals, how the brain developed, and what it means to be human. In The Deep History of Ourselves, LeDoux argues that the key to understanding human behavior lies in viewing evolution through the prism of the first living organisms.
-
-
Oversold
- By Michael on 03-04-20
By: Joseph LeDoux
-
Mind and Cosmos
- Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False
- By: Thomas Nagel
- Narrated by: Brian Troxell
- Length: 3 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The modern materialist approach to life has conspicuously failed to explain such central mind-related features of our world as consciousness, intentionality, meaning, and value. This failure to account for something so integral to nature as mind, argues philosopher Thomas Nagel, is a major problem, threatening to unravel the entire naturalistic world picture, extending to biology, evolutionary theory, and cosmology. Since minds are features of biological systems that have developed through evolution, the standard materialist version of evolutionary biology is fundamentally incomplete.
-
-
Intellectual honesty at its finest
- By Alice Walker on 02-15-18
By: Thomas Nagel
-
Reality+
- Virtual Worlds and the Problems of Philosophy
- By: David J. Chalmers
- Narrated by: Grant Cartwright
- Length: 17 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Virtual reality is genuine reality; that’s the central thesis of Reality+. In a highly original work of “technophilosophy,” David J. Chalmers gives a compelling analysis of our technological future. He argues that virtual worlds are not second-class worlds, and that we can live a meaningful life in virtual reality. We may even be in a virtual world already.
-
-
A book that could have been an email
- By Peter C. on 04-15-22
-
The Grand Biocentric Design
- How Life Creates Reality
- By: Robert Lanza, Matej Pavšič
- Narrated by: Peter Ganim
- Length: 8 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What is consciousness? Why are we here? Where did it all come from - the laws of nature, the stars, the universe? Humans have been asking these questions forever, but science hasn't succeeded in providing many answers - until now. In The Grand Biocentric Design, Robert Lanza, one of Time magazine's "100 Most Influential People", is joined by theoretical physicist Matej Pavšic and astronomer Bob Berman to shed light on the big picture that has long eluded philosophers and scientists alike.
-
-
Should be in the fiction section.
- By Frank on 12-29-20
By: Robert Lanza, and others
-
The Big Picture
- On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself
- By: Sean Carroll
- Narrated by: Sean Carroll
- Length: 17 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Already internationally acclaimed for his elegant, lucid writing on the most challenging notions in modern physics, Sean Carroll is emerging as one of the greatest humanist thinkers of his generation as he brings his extraordinary intellect to bear not only on the Higgs boson and extra dimensions but now also on our deepest personal questions. Where are we? Who are we? Are our emotions, our beliefs, and our hopes and dreams ultimately meaningless out there in the void?
-
-
ABSOLUTE MUST READ!
- By serine on 05-12-16
By: Sean Carroll
-
Our Mathematical Universe
- My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality
- By: Max Tegmark
- Narrated by: Rob Shapiro
- Length: 15 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Max Tegmark leads us on an astonishing journey through past, present and future, and through the physics, astronomy, and mathematics that are the foundation of his work, most particularly his hypothesis that our physical reality is a mathematical structure and his theory of the ultimate multiverse. In a dazzling combination of both popular and groundbreaking science, he not only helps us grasp his often mind-boggling theories, but he also shares with us some of the often surprising triumphs and disappointments that have shaped his life as a scientist.
-
-
Wow!
- By Michael on 02-02-14
By: Max Tegmark
-
Until the End of Time
- Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe
- By: Brian Greene
- Narrated by: Brian Greene
- Length: 14 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Until the End of Time is Brian Greene's breathtaking new exploration of the cosmos and our quest to find meaning in the face of this vast expanse. Greene takes us on a journey from the big bang to the end of time, exploring how lasting structures formed, how life and mind emerged, and how we grapple with our existence through narrative, myth, religion, creative expression, science, the quest for truth, and a deep longing for the eternal.
-
-
Uneven
- By NJ on 03-03-20
By: Brian Greene
-
Probable Impossibilities
- Musings on Beginnings and Endings
- By: Alan Lightman
- Narrated by: Christopher Grove
- Length: 5 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Can space be divided into smaller and smaller units, ad infinitum? Does space extend to larger and larger regions, on and on to infinity? Is consciousness reducible to the material brain and its neurons? What was the origin of life, and can biologists create life from scratch in the lab? Physicist and novelist Alan Lightman explores these questions and more - from the anatomy of a smile to the capriciousness of memory to the specialness of life in the universe to what came before the Big Bang.
-
-
Mumbler
- By Phil Gaskill on 08-07-22
By: Alan Lightman
-
Biocentrism
- How Life and Consciousness are the Keys to the True Nature of the Universe
- By: Robert Lanza, Bob Berman
- Narrated by: Peter Ganim
- Length: 6 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The whole of Western natural philosophy is undergoing a sea change, forced upon us by the experimental findings of quantum theory. At the same time, these findings have increased our doubt and uncertainty about traditional physical explanations of the universe's genesis and structure. Biocentrism completes this shift in worldview, turning the planet upside down again with the revolutionary view that life creates the universe instead of the other way around.
-
-
The Copenhagen Interpretation Resurrected
- By S. Kozlowski on 12-14-09
By: Robert Lanza, and others
-
Existential Physics
- A Scientist's Guide to Life's Biggest Questions
- By: Sabine Hossenfelder
- Narrated by: Gina Daniels
- Length: 8 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Not only can we not currently explain the origin of the universe, it is questionable we will ever be able to explain it. The notion that there are universes within particles, or that particles are conscious, is ascientific, as is the hypothesis that our universe is a computer simulation. On the other hand, the idea that the universe itself is conscious is difficult to rule out entirely.
-
-
Unscientific and unengaging
- By Jase G on 03-29-23
-
Life's Edge
- The Search for What It Means to Be Alive
- By: Carl Zimmer
- Narrated by: Joe Ochman
- Length: 9 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Carl Zimmer investigates one of the biggest questions of all: What is life? The answer seems obvious until you try to seriously answer it. Is the apple sitting on your kitchen counter alive, or is only the apple tree it came from deserving of the word? If we can’t answer that question here on Earth, how will we know when and if we discover alien life on other worlds? The question hangs over some of society’s most charged conflicts - whether a fertilized egg is a living person, for example, and when we ought to declare a person legally dead.
-
-
What is Life?
- By Shane S Shull on 04-29-21
By: Carl Zimmer
Critic reviews
“In Galileo’s Error, Philip Goff argues for a new approach to the scientific study of consciousness. He offers an accessible and compelling analysis of why our felt experience continues to elude scientific explanation and why the theories that describe consciousness as a fundamental feature of matter have been neglected - and why they now deserve serious consideration. This is a must-read for anyone interested in the future of consciousness studies.” (Annaka Harris, best-selling author of Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind)
“This is one of the clearest accounts I've ever read about the mystery of consciousness, and the way in which one theory about it, panpsychism, does a great deal to explain how it occurs and what it is. Why shouldn't consciousness be a normal property of matter, like mass or electrical charge? This idea has the glorious simplicity of our first realization that the earth goes around the sun, and not vice versa. Suddenly, the universe appears in a new and much more revealing perspective. Philip Goff's book is altogether a splendid introduction to this fascinating idea.” (Philip Pullman, author of the “His Dark Materials” series)
“Philip Goff’s new book, Galileo’s Error, introduces the public to a revolutionary approach to one of the most stubborn of mysteries: How does the brain, with its chemical and electrical processes, give rise to a mind, whose thoughts, emotions, colors and tones we apprehend directly? In this provocative, brave, and clearly written book, Goff makes a compelling case for an initially absurd thesis: that the colors we perceive are instances of universal qualities hidden within all material processes.” (Lee Smolin, author of Einstein’s Unfinished Revolution and founding member of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics)
Related to this topic
-
The Big Picture
- On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself
- By: Sean Carroll
- Narrated by: Sean Carroll
- Length: 17 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Already internationally acclaimed for his elegant, lucid writing on the most challenging notions in modern physics, Sean Carroll is emerging as one of the greatest humanist thinkers of his generation as he brings his extraordinary intellect to bear not only on the Higgs boson and extra dimensions but now also on our deepest personal questions. Where are we? Who are we? Are our emotions, our beliefs, and our hopes and dreams ultimately meaningless out there in the void?
-
-
ABSOLUTE MUST READ!
- By serine on 05-12-16
By: Sean Carroll
-
Philosophy of Mind
- An Audio Guide
- By: Edward Feser
- Narrated by: Andrea Powell
- Length: 9 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this lively and entertaining introduction to the philosophy of mind, Edward Feser explores the questions central to the discipline, and relates them not only to the human brain and its capacity for thought, but also to the increasing sophistication of artificial intelligence. This in-depth primer is an account of all the most important and significant attempts that have been made to answer the riddles of consciousness and thought.
-
-
Author is a Christian apologist, and it shows
- By David Penn on 08-30-15
By: Edward Feser
-
There Is a God
- How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind
- By: Antony Flew, Roy Abraham Varghese - contributor
- Narrated by: Jonathan Cowley
- Length: 5 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In There Is a God, one of the world's preeminent atheists discloses how his commitment to "follow the argument wherever it leads" led him to a belief in God as Creator. This is a compelling and refreshingly open-minded argument that will forever change the atheism debate.
-
-
Disappointing
- By Rebekah Hull on 08-03-21
By: Antony Flew, and others
-
Where the Conflict Really Lies
- Science, Religion, & Naturalism
- By: Alvin Plantinga
- Narrated by: Michael Butler Murray
- Length: 12 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This audiobook is a long-awaited major statement by a pre-eminent analytic philosopher, Alvin Plantinga, on one of our biggest debates - the compatibility of science and religion. The last twenty years has seen a cottage industry of books on this divide, but with little consensus emerging. Plantinga, as a top philosopher but also a proponent of the rationality of religious belief, has a unique contribution to make. His theme in this short book is that the conflict between science and theistic religion is actually superficial, and that at a deeper level they are in concord.
-
-
The reader makes or breaks an audiobook.
- By Alec on 02-16-15
By: Alvin Plantinga
-
The Grand Biocentric Design
- How Life Creates Reality
- By: Robert Lanza, Matej Pavšič
- Narrated by: Peter Ganim
- Length: 8 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What is consciousness? Why are we here? Where did it all come from - the laws of nature, the stars, the universe? Humans have been asking these questions forever, but science hasn't succeeded in providing many answers - until now. In The Grand Biocentric Design, Robert Lanza, one of Time magazine's "100 Most Influential People", is joined by theoretical physicist Matej Pavšic and astronomer Bob Berman to shed light on the big picture that has long eluded philosophers and scientists alike.
-
-
Should be in the fiction section.
- By Frank on 12-29-20
By: Robert Lanza, and others
-
The Quantum and the Lotus
- A Journey to the Frontiers Where Science and Buddhism Meet
- By: Matthieu Ricard, Trinh Xuan Thuan
- Narrated by: James Anderson Foster
- Length: 10 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Matthieu Ricard and Trinh Thuan met at an academic conference in the summer of 1997, they began discussing the many remarkable connections between the teachings of Buddhism and the findings of recent science. That conversation grew into an astonishing correspondence exploring a series of fascinating questions. Did the universe have a beginning? Might our perception of time in fact be an illusion, a phenomenon created in our brains that has no ultimate reality? What is consciousness and how did it evolve?
-
-
The
- By willmit on 05-02-21
By: Matthieu Ricard, and others
-
The Big Picture
- On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself
- By: Sean Carroll
- Narrated by: Sean Carroll
- Length: 17 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Already internationally acclaimed for his elegant, lucid writing on the most challenging notions in modern physics, Sean Carroll is emerging as one of the greatest humanist thinkers of his generation as he brings his extraordinary intellect to bear not only on the Higgs boson and extra dimensions but now also on our deepest personal questions. Where are we? Who are we? Are our emotions, our beliefs, and our hopes and dreams ultimately meaningless out there in the void?
-
-
ABSOLUTE MUST READ!
- By serine on 05-12-16
By: Sean Carroll
-
Philosophy of Mind
- An Audio Guide
- By: Edward Feser
- Narrated by: Andrea Powell
- Length: 9 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this lively and entertaining introduction to the philosophy of mind, Edward Feser explores the questions central to the discipline, and relates them not only to the human brain and its capacity for thought, but also to the increasing sophistication of artificial intelligence. This in-depth primer is an account of all the most important and significant attempts that have been made to answer the riddles of consciousness and thought.
-
-
Author is a Christian apologist, and it shows
- By David Penn on 08-30-15
By: Edward Feser
-
There Is a God
- How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind
- By: Antony Flew, Roy Abraham Varghese - contributor
- Narrated by: Jonathan Cowley
- Length: 5 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In There Is a God, one of the world's preeminent atheists discloses how his commitment to "follow the argument wherever it leads" led him to a belief in God as Creator. This is a compelling and refreshingly open-minded argument that will forever change the atheism debate.
-
-
Disappointing
- By Rebekah Hull on 08-03-21
By: Antony Flew, and others
-
Where the Conflict Really Lies
- Science, Religion, & Naturalism
- By: Alvin Plantinga
- Narrated by: Michael Butler Murray
- Length: 12 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This audiobook is a long-awaited major statement by a pre-eminent analytic philosopher, Alvin Plantinga, on one of our biggest debates - the compatibility of science and religion. The last twenty years has seen a cottage industry of books on this divide, but with little consensus emerging. Plantinga, as a top philosopher but also a proponent of the rationality of religious belief, has a unique contribution to make. His theme in this short book is that the conflict between science and theistic religion is actually superficial, and that at a deeper level they are in concord.
-
-
The reader makes or breaks an audiobook.
- By Alec on 02-16-15
By: Alvin Plantinga
-
The Grand Biocentric Design
- How Life Creates Reality
- By: Robert Lanza, Matej Pavšič
- Narrated by: Peter Ganim
- Length: 8 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What is consciousness? Why are we here? Where did it all come from - the laws of nature, the stars, the universe? Humans have been asking these questions forever, but science hasn't succeeded in providing many answers - until now. In The Grand Biocentric Design, Robert Lanza, one of Time magazine's "100 Most Influential People", is joined by theoretical physicist Matej Pavšic and astronomer Bob Berman to shed light on the big picture that has long eluded philosophers and scientists alike.
-
-
Should be in the fiction section.
- By Frank on 12-29-20
By: Robert Lanza, and others
-
The Quantum and the Lotus
- A Journey to the Frontiers Where Science and Buddhism Meet
- By: Matthieu Ricard, Trinh Xuan Thuan
- Narrated by: James Anderson Foster
- Length: 10 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Matthieu Ricard and Trinh Thuan met at an academic conference in the summer of 1997, they began discussing the many remarkable connections between the teachings of Buddhism and the findings of recent science. That conversation grew into an astonishing correspondence exploring a series of fascinating questions. Did the universe have a beginning? Might our perception of time in fact be an illusion, a phenomenon created in our brains that has no ultimate reality? What is consciousness and how did it evolve?
-
-
The
- By willmit on 05-02-21
By: Matthieu Ricard, and others
-
A Beginner’s Guide to Reality
- Exploring Our Everyday Adventures in Wonderland
- By: Jim Baggott
- Narrated by: Victor Bevine
- Length: 9 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A unique fusion of philosophy and metaphysics set against the backdrop of contemporary culture. Have you ever wondered if the world is really there when you're not looking? We tend to take the reality of our world very much for granted. This book will lead you down the rabbit hole in search of something we can point to, hang our hats on, and say this is real.
-
-
A real great listen on the nature of reality
- By Patrick Mabry, Jr. on 07-30-14
By: Jim Baggott
-
Beyond Biocentrism
- Rethinking Time, Space, Consciousness, and the Illusion of Death
- By: Robert Lanza, Bob Berman
- Narrated by: Peter Ganim
- Length: 7 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Beyond Biocentrism, acclaimed biologist Robert Lanza and astronomer Bob Berman take the listener on an intellectual thrill ride as they reexamine everything we thought we knew about life, death, the universe, and the nature of reality itself. The first step is acknowledging that our existing model of reality is looking increasingly creaky in the face of recent scientific discoveries.
-
-
Here's the thing
- By Mikal on 11-09-18
By: Robert Lanza, and others
-
The Devil's Delusion
- Atheism and its Scientific Pretensions
- By: David Berlinski
- Narrated by: Dennis Holland
- Length: 6 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Militant atheism is on the rise. In recent years, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, and Christopher Hitchens have produced a steady stream of best-selling books denigrating religious belief. These authors are merely the leading edge of a larger movement that includes much of the scientific community. In response, mathematician David Berlinski, himself a secular Jew, delivers a biting defense of religious thought.
-
-
Riddled With Problems
- By Ben on 11-01-13
By: David Berlinski
-
A Theory of Everything (That Matters)
- A Brief Guide to Einstein, Relativity, and His Surprising Thoughts on God
- By: Alister McGrath
- Narrated by: Frazer Douglas
- Length: 5 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Einstein’s revolutionary scientific ideas have transformed our world, ushering in the nuclear age. The current pace of scientific and technological progress is simply astounding. So is there any place for faith in such a world? Einstein himself gave careful thought to the deepest questions of life. His towering intellectual status means he is someone worth listening to when we think through the big questions of life.
-
-
Makes you think...
- By Katy Bagdon on 10-10-19
By: Alister McGrath
-
Freedom Evolves
- By: Daniel C. Dennett
- Narrated by: Robert Blumenfeld
- Length: 11 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Can there be freedom and free will in a deterministic world? Renowned philosopher Daniel Dennett emphatically answers "yes!" Using an array of provocative formulations, Dennett sets out to show how we alone among the animals have evolved minds that give us free will and morality. Weaving a richly detailed narrative, Dennett explains in a series of strikingly original arguments - drawing upon evolutionary biology, cognitive neuroscience, economics, and philosophy - that far from being an enemy of traditional explorations of freedom, morality, and meaning, the evolutionary perspective can be an indispensable ally.
-
-
I knew I was going to like this book
- By Gary on 05-30-14
-
Why Does the World Exist?
- An Existential Detective Story
- By: Jim Holt
- Narrated by: Steven Menasche
- Length: 11 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Author Jim Holt explores the greatest metaphysical mystery of all: why is there something rather than nothing? This runaway best seller, which has captured the imagination of critics and the public alike, traces our latest efforts to grasp the origins of the universe. Holt adopts the role of cosmological detective, traveling the globe to interview a host of celebrated scientists, philosophers, and writers.
-
-
Fatal Reader Flaw
- By Let's Be Reasonable on 05-09-14
By: Jim Holt
-
The Trouble with Physics
- The Rise of String Theory, The Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next
- By: Lee Smolin
- Narrated by: Walter Dixon
- Length: 14 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this illuminating book, the renowned theoretical physicist Lee Smolin argues that fundamental physics - the search for the laws of nature - is losing its way. Ambitious ideas about extra dimensions, exotic particles, multiple universes, and strings have captured the publics imagination -- and the imagination of experts.
-
-
Strings snipped
- By J B Tipton on 06-06-10
By: Lee Smolin
-
The Flip
- Epiphanies of Mind and the Future of Knowledge
- By: Jeffrey J. Kripal
- Narrated by: James Lurie
- Length: 6 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A “flip,” writes Jeffrey J. Kripal, is “a reversal of perspective,” “a new real,” often born of an extreme, life-changing experience. The Flip is Kripal’s ambitious, visionary program for unifying the sciences and the humanities to expand our minds, open our hearts, and negotiate a peaceful resolution to the culture wars.
-
-
Interesting subject, terrible narrator
- By Lesley on 11-16-22
-
Mind and Cosmos
- Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False
- By: Thomas Nagel
- Narrated by: Brian Troxell
- Length: 3 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The modern materialist approach to life has conspicuously failed to explain such central mind-related features of our world as consciousness, intentionality, meaning, and value. This failure to account for something so integral to nature as mind, argues philosopher Thomas Nagel, is a major problem, threatening to unravel the entire naturalistic world picture, extending to biology, evolutionary theory, and cosmology. Since minds are features of biological systems that have developed through evolution, the standard materialist version of evolutionary biology is fundamentally incomplete.
-
-
Intellectual honesty at its finest
- By Alice Walker on 02-15-18
By: Thomas Nagel
-
Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking
- By: Daniel C. Dennett
- Narrated by: Jeff Crawford
- Length: 13 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Over a storied career, Daniel C. Dennett has engaged questions about science and the workings of the mind. His answers have combined rigorous argument with strong empirical grounding. And a lot of fun. Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking offers seventy-seven of Dennett’s most successful “imagination-extenders and focus-holders” meant to guide you through some of life’s most treacherous subject matter: evolution, meaning, mind, and free will.
-
-
Loved it, but some philosophy background needed.
- By LongerILiveLessIKnow on 11-14-13
-
The Landscape of History
- How Historians Map the Past
- By: John Lewis Gaddis
- Narrated by: Jack Chekijian
- Length: 6 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What is history, and why should we study it? Is there such a thing as historical truth? Is history a science? One of the most accomplished historians at work today, John Lewis Gaddis, answers these and other questions in this short, witty, and humane book. The Landscape of History provides a searching look at the historian's craft as well as a strong argument for why a historical consciousness should matter to us today.
-
-
Excellent Book!
- By Billy on 09-15-18
-
The Experience of God
- Being, Consciousness, Bliss
- By: David Bentley Hart
- Narrated by: Tom Pile
- Length: 12 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Despite the recent ferocious public debate about belief, the concept most central to the discussion "God" frequently remains vaguely and obscurely described. Are those engaged in these arguments even talking about the same thing? In a wide-ranging response to this confusion, esteemed scholar David Bentley Hart pursues a clarification of how the word "God” functions in the world’s great theistic faiths.
-
-
The clearest thinking I have heard in ages.
- By Carlos Miranda on 06-17-15
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
Why? The Purpose of the Universe
- By: Philip Goff
- Narrated by: Philip Goff
- Length: 8 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Why are we here? What's the point of existence? On the "big questions" of meaning and purpose, Western thought has been dominated by the dichotomy of traditional religion and secular atheism. In this pioneering work, Philip Goff argues that it is time to move on from both God and atheism. Through an exploration of contemporary cosmology and cutting-edge philosophical research on consciousness, Goff argues for cosmic purpose: the idea that the universe is directed towards certain goals, such as the emergence of life.
-
-
Great beginning and middle. Disappointing conclusion.
- By rocky500 on 10-01-24
By: Philip Goff
-
The Science of Can and Can't
- A Physicist's Journey Through the Land of Counterfactuals
- By: Chiara Marletto
- Narrated by: Katharine Lee McEwan
- Length: 7 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
There is a vast class of things that science has so far almost entirely neglected. They are central to the understanding of physical reality both at an everyday level and at the level of the most fundamental phenomena in physics, yet have traditionally been assumed to be impossible to incorporate into fundamental scientific explanations. They are facts not about what is (the actual) but about what could be (counterfactuals).
-
-
Was Hoping for Depth
- By Evert on 06-19-21
By: Chiara Marletto
-
The Dream Universe
- How Fundamental Physics Lost Its Way
- By: David Lindley
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 7 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the early 17th century, Galileo broke free from the hold of ancient Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy. He drastically changed the framework through which we view the natural world when he asserted that we should base our theory of reality on what we can observe rather than pure thought. In the process, he invented what we would come to call science. This set the stage for all the breakthroughs that followed - from Kepler to Newton to Einstein.
-
-
Provocative Argument
- By Craig Doner on 05-26-20
By: David Lindley
-
This View of Life
- Completing the Darwinian Revolution
- By: David Sloan Wilson
- Narrated by: René Ruiz
- Length: 8 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It is widely understood that Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution completely revolutionized the study of biology. Yet, according to David Sloan Wilson, the Darwinian revolution won’t be truly complete until it is applied more broadly - to everything associated with the words “human,” “culture,” and “policy.”
-
-
Utopian preaching
- By Roman on 05-15-20
-
How to Make an Apple Pie from Scratch
- In Search of the Recipe for Our Universe, from the Origins of Atoms to the Big Bang
- By: Harry Cliff
- Narrated by: Harry Cliff
- Length: 11 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Harry Cliff - a University of Cambridge particle physicist and researcher on the Large Hadron Collider - sets out in pursuit of answers. He ventures to the largest underground research facility in the world, deep beneath Italy's Gran Sasso mountains, where scientists gaze into the heart of the Sun using the most elusive of particles, the ghostly neutrino. He visits CERN in Switzerland to explore the "Antimatter Factory," where the stuff of science fiction is manufactured daily (and we're close to knowing whether it falls up).
-
-
Down the rabbit hole in a most fascinating way!
- By Rick B on 10-04-21
By: Harry Cliff
-
Speed & Scale
- An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now
- By: John Doerr, Ryan Panchadsaram
- Narrated by: John Doerr, Sundar Pichai, Margot Brown, and others
- Length: 11 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 2006, John Doerr was moved by Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth and a challenge from his teenage daughter: “Dad, your generation created this problem. You better fix it.” Since then, Doerr has searched for solutions to this existential problem - as an investor, an advocate, and a philanthropist. Fifteen years later, despite breakthroughs in batteries, electric vehicles, plant-based proteins, and solar and wind power, global warming continues to get worse. Its impact is all around us: droughts, floods, wildfires, the melting of the polar ice caps.
-
-
Most Important and Worst Audiobook ever!
- By Amazon Customer on 12-17-21
By: John Doerr, and others
-
Why? The Purpose of the Universe
- By: Philip Goff
- Narrated by: Philip Goff
- Length: 8 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Why are we here? What's the point of existence? On the "big questions" of meaning and purpose, Western thought has been dominated by the dichotomy of traditional religion and secular atheism. In this pioneering work, Philip Goff argues that it is time to move on from both God and atheism. Through an exploration of contemporary cosmology and cutting-edge philosophical research on consciousness, Goff argues for cosmic purpose: the idea that the universe is directed towards certain goals, such as the emergence of life.
-
-
Great beginning and middle. Disappointing conclusion.
- By rocky500 on 10-01-24
By: Philip Goff
-
The Science of Can and Can't
- A Physicist's Journey Through the Land of Counterfactuals
- By: Chiara Marletto
- Narrated by: Katharine Lee McEwan
- Length: 7 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
There is a vast class of things that science has so far almost entirely neglected. They are central to the understanding of physical reality both at an everyday level and at the level of the most fundamental phenomena in physics, yet have traditionally been assumed to be impossible to incorporate into fundamental scientific explanations. They are facts not about what is (the actual) but about what could be (counterfactuals).
-
-
Was Hoping for Depth
- By Evert on 06-19-21
By: Chiara Marletto
-
The Dream Universe
- How Fundamental Physics Lost Its Way
- By: David Lindley
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 7 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the early 17th century, Galileo broke free from the hold of ancient Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy. He drastically changed the framework through which we view the natural world when he asserted that we should base our theory of reality on what we can observe rather than pure thought. In the process, he invented what we would come to call science. This set the stage for all the breakthroughs that followed - from Kepler to Newton to Einstein.
-
-
Provocative Argument
- By Craig Doner on 05-26-20
By: David Lindley
-
This View of Life
- Completing the Darwinian Revolution
- By: David Sloan Wilson
- Narrated by: René Ruiz
- Length: 8 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It is widely understood that Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution completely revolutionized the study of biology. Yet, according to David Sloan Wilson, the Darwinian revolution won’t be truly complete until it is applied more broadly - to everything associated with the words “human,” “culture,” and “policy.”
-
-
Utopian preaching
- By Roman on 05-15-20
-
How to Make an Apple Pie from Scratch
- In Search of the Recipe for Our Universe, from the Origins of Atoms to the Big Bang
- By: Harry Cliff
- Narrated by: Harry Cliff
- Length: 11 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Harry Cliff - a University of Cambridge particle physicist and researcher on the Large Hadron Collider - sets out in pursuit of answers. He ventures to the largest underground research facility in the world, deep beneath Italy's Gran Sasso mountains, where scientists gaze into the heart of the Sun using the most elusive of particles, the ghostly neutrino. He visits CERN in Switzerland to explore the "Antimatter Factory," where the stuff of science fiction is manufactured daily (and we're close to knowing whether it falls up).
-
-
Down the rabbit hole in a most fascinating way!
- By Rick B on 10-04-21
By: Harry Cliff
-
Speed & Scale
- An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now
- By: John Doerr, Ryan Panchadsaram
- Narrated by: John Doerr, Sundar Pichai, Margot Brown, and others
- Length: 11 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 2006, John Doerr was moved by Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth and a challenge from his teenage daughter: “Dad, your generation created this problem. You better fix it.” Since then, Doerr has searched for solutions to this existential problem - as an investor, an advocate, and a philanthropist. Fifteen years later, despite breakthroughs in batteries, electric vehicles, plant-based proteins, and solar and wind power, global warming continues to get worse. Its impact is all around us: droughts, floods, wildfires, the melting of the polar ice caps.
-
-
Most Important and Worst Audiobook ever!
- By Amazon Customer on 12-17-21
By: John Doerr, and others
-
The Failed Promise
- Reconstruction, Frederick Douglass, and the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson
- By: Robert S. Levine
- Narrated by: Ryan Vincent Anderson
- Length: 9 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Robert S. Levine foregrounds the viewpoints of Black Americans on Reconstruction in his absorbing account of the struggle between the great orator Frederick Douglass and President Andrew Johnson.
-
-
A timely review of the threat to the nation of a President who is unlistening to the “better angels of our nature.”
- By Karl R. Walko on 02-28-24
By: Robert S. Levine
-
Life's Edge
- The Search for What It Means to Be Alive
- By: Carl Zimmer
- Narrated by: Joe Ochman
- Length: 9 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Carl Zimmer investigates one of the biggest questions of all: What is life? The answer seems obvious until you try to seriously answer it. Is the apple sitting on your kitchen counter alive, or is only the apple tree it came from deserving of the word? If we can’t answer that question here on Earth, how will we know when and if we discover alien life on other worlds? The question hangs over some of society’s most charged conflicts - whether a fertilized egg is a living person, for example, and when we ought to declare a person legally dead.
-
-
What is Life?
- By Shane S Shull on 04-29-21
By: Carl Zimmer
-
Einstein's War
- How Relativity Triumphed Amid the Vicious Nationalism of World War I
- By: Matthew Stanley
- Narrated by: Matthew Stanley
- Length: 12 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Few recognize how the Great War, the industrialized slaughter that bled Europe from 1914 to 1918, shaped Einstein’s life and work. While Einstein never held a rifle, he formulated general relativity blockaded in Berlin, literally starving. He lost 50 pounds in three months, unable to communicate with his most important colleagues. Some of those colleagues fought against rabid nationalism; others were busy inventing chemical warfare - scientists trapped in the power plays of empire. Meanwhile, Einstein struggled to craft relativity and persuade the world that it was correct.
-
-
When will I learn?
- By Paul on 01-01-20
By: Matthew Stanley
-
Revolutionary
- George Washington at War
- By: Robert L. O'Connell
- Narrated by: Eric Jason Martin
- Length: 12 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From an acclaimed military historian, a bold reappraisal of young George Washington, an ambitious if reckless soldier destined to become the legendary general who took on the British and, through his leadership, defined the American character.
-
-
Interesting
- By Shielding C on 06-25-22
-
The Nature of Life and Death
- Every Body Leaves a Trace
- By: Patricia Wiltshire
- Narrated by: Patricia Wiltshire
- Length: 10 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A riveting blend of science writing and true-crime narrative, The Nature of Life and Death details Wiltshire's unique journey from college professor to crime fighter: solving murders, locating corpses, and exonerating the falsely accused. Along the way, she introduces us to the unseen world all around us and underneath our feet: plants, animals, pollen, spores, fungi, and microbes that we move through every day. Her story is a testament to the power of persistence and reveals how our relationship with the vast natural world reaches far deeper than we might think.
-
-
Fascinating Welsh granny
- By Kirby C. on 01-16-20
-
This Way to the Universe
- A Theoretical Physicist's Journey to the Edge of Reality
- By: Michael Dine
- Narrated by: Michael Dine
- Length: 8 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This Way to the Universe is a celebration of the astounding, ongoing scientific investigations that have revealed the nature of reality at its smallest, at its largest, and at the scale of our daily lives. The enigmas that Professor Michael Dine discusses are like landmarks on a fantastic journey to the edge of the universe. Asked where to find out about the big bang, dark matter, the Higgs boson particle - the long cutting edge of physics right now - Dine had no single book he could recommend. This is his accessible, authoritative, and up-to-date answer.
-
-
Interesting but far above my intellect
- By Richard M. on 04-25-23
By: Michael Dine
-
Wagnerism
- Art and Politics in the Shadow of Music
- By: Alex Ross
- Narrated by: Alex Ross
- Length: 28 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Alex Ross, renowned New Yorker music critic and author of the international best seller and Pulitzer Prize finalist The Rest Is Noise, reveals how Richard Wagner became the proving ground for modern art and politics - an aesthetic war zone where the Western world wrestled with its capacity for beauty and violence.
-
-
Not Just for Wagner Experts!
- By Rupert Pupkin on 09-26-20
By: Alex Ross
-
The Story of More
- How We Got to Climate Change and Where to Go from Here
- By: Hope Jahren
- Narrated by: Hope Jahren
- Length: 6 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Hope Jahren is an award-winning scientist, a brilliant writer, a passionate teacher, and one of the seven billion people with whom we share this earth. In The Story of More, she illuminates the link between human habits and our imperiled planet. In concise chapters, she takes us through the science behind the key inventions—from electric power to large-scale farming to automobiles—that, even as they help us, release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere like never before.
-
-
Like Al Gore, stuck on the problem
- By Eleanor B. Hildreth on 06-04-20
By: Hope Jahren
-
The Greek Revolution
- 1821 and the Making of Modern Europe
- By: Mark Mazower
- Narrated by: John Lee, Mark Mazower
- Length: 20 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As Mark Mazower shows us in his enthralling and definitive new account, myths about the Greek War of Independence outpaced the facts from the very beginning, and for good reason. This was an unlikely cause, against long odds, a disorganized collection of Greek patriots up against what was still one of the most storied empires in the world, the Ottomans. The revolutionaries needed all the help they could get.
-
-
Excellent, had it not been for the narrator
- By Jean N on 05-15-22
By: Mark Mazower
-
The Butterfly Effect
- Insects and the Making of the Modern World
- By: Edward D. Melillo
- Narrated by: Kaleo Griffith
- Length: 6 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Insects might make us recoil in repugnance, but they also manufacture - or make possible in other ways - many of the things we take for granted in our daily lives. When we bite into a shiny apple, listen to the resonant notes of a violin, try on the latest fashions, receive a dental implant, or get a manicure, we are mingling with the by-products of their everyday lives.
-
-
Informative And Entertaining
- By Eugenia on 11-15-20
-
The Reopening of the Western Mind
- The Resurgence of Intellectual Life from the End of Antiquity to the Dawn of the Enlightenment
- By: Charles Freeman
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall
- Length: 27 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Charles Freeman, lauded historical scholar and author of The Closing of the Western Mind (“A triumph”—The Times), explores the rebirth of Western thought in the centuries that followed the demise of the classical era. As the dominance of Christian teachings gradually subsided over time, a new open-mindedness made way for the ideas of morality and theology, and fueled and formed the backbone of the Western mind of the late Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and beyond.
-
-
Fascinating survey of 1,000+ years of thought
- By Roger on 11-07-23
By: Charles Freeman
-
The Next Great Migration
- The Beauty and Terror of Life on the Move
- By: Sonia Shah
- Narrated by: Sonia Shah
- Length: 10 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A prize-winning journalist upends our centuries-long assumptions about migration through science, history, and reporting - predicting its lifesaving power in the face of climate change.
-
-
BRAVA!!!!
- By Liz Jardine on 08-03-20
By: Sonia Shah
What listeners say about Galileo's Error
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Amazon Customer
- 04-24-23
Challenging details with periodic “aha moments”
At times so very satisfying. Like a well-written mystery story. Countless clues, but whatever does it all mean! How will it end? I guess we’ll all know as soon as Mr. Goff does.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Kindle Customer
- 02-02-20
Connects consciousness with reality and to an ultimate meaning of life.
Inspired philosophical analysis of logical basis for consciousness. Leads reader through complex arguments looking for affirmations and contractions.
He then uses his conclusions to give meaning and understanding to spiritual ideas that will enhance our view of our place in the universe.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- AOK
- 12-09-20
Well thought out, but at the end something doesn’t fully click
The book is well thought out. It provides a good overview of different approaches to consciousness. That said, while the author does not explicitly claim that it is the sole answer, the book seems to lean heavily in the direction of pan-psychism.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Brandon Mills
- 01-16-24
This is the tip of the spear!
As a pragmatic scientist, who studying the roots of consciousness, and isn’t afraid to explore all the information available — it was amazing to finally find an author can bring together the algorithm which we live in and put it in words that most people can understand so that hopefully we can evolve before we kill ourselves.
I only have one suggestion for the author, which is it’s important that you have a pragmatic meditative breakthrough. Your next book it would be great if you addressed the factual data that meditation is being observed through fMRI. It gives us a much more tangible baseline of awareness around how those who are advanced meditators (and please let’s stop using the word mystics) connect to the fundamental universal
Conscious state. That data will also open up a whole New World of brain states the frequencies connected to them, and how that might align with a fundamental consciousness that we could explore through pen psychist ideas.
This is a fantastic book that could change a lot of peoples lives and spark curiosity. My only fear is that it’s too advanced for how locked in most of the world is to the mechanisms and that empty space.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Shane D Zanath
- 05-14-21
Great book at describing Panpsychism BUT...
I thought this was a great work in the philosophy of Panpsychism. I thought it did an excellent job at showing the primary challenge for Pansychism of the combination problem. However, I think that Goff should have further elaborated on how IIT could be incorporated with the Pansychism world view. I'd highly recommend Max Tegmark's book Life 3.0 to any readers of this book (the entire book about AI is amazing, but particularly the last chapter on consciousness).
I understand that we need to try to pursue a model of consciousness that best fits the evidence rather than what we wish to be true or on arguements from authority. But I absolutely loved that Goff mentioned the arguements of Bertrand Russell (and Sir Arthur Eddington) were rediscovered. I wish I knew when Goff claimed these arguments had been "rediscovered". Bertrand Russell is perhaps my biggest hero, and I read his book The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell over 20 years ago. One of his essays contained within "Physics and Neutral Monism" is essentially a gateway to Pansychism. So I found it absolutely fascinating to revisit that book and the annotations I had made in the margins from several decades ago! I would recommend reading the aforementioned Russell essay, as I had to reread for myself.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
4 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Michael Zevan-Lunbery
- 01-07-23
Fascinating and well-read
This seemed a well-organized presentation of the variety of possible views on consciousness, with a convincing case made for the authors preference.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Mike
- 02-19-21
A Great But One-Sided Conversation
Here, Goff explores panpsychism and contrasts it with two other prominent theories of consciousness, dualism and materialism. Panpsychism, like dualism but unlike materialism, takes consciousness as fundamental in the universe. Unlike dualism (which operates outside of physics via "psychophysical laws"), Goff considers panpsychism to operate wholly within the bounds of physics. However, to do this (and this is unique to panpsychism), one must consider the "data point" of consciousness as proof of the "qualitative", "internal natures" of "matter". Internal Natures are given their own "technical appendix" in this book.
The use of quotation marks above is not meant to be derisive (except maybe when referencing the technical appendix). It means that Goff's choice of words here are highly consequential. For example, how seriously will you, dear reader, take the "data point" of subjective consciousness? Is "qualitative" analysis really something science currently ignores, a science which has elucidated for us non-quantitative structures such as the biological cell, without needing to reference "internal natures"? And of "matter" - what of the non-massy, non-complex-structure forming photons and radiation of the world? Does this too have an internal nature? If so, why insist on using the words "matter" and "mass" throughout? And if not, what happens to the internal consciousness of a mass when it is converted to non-massy energy?
At times, Goff's focus is too narrow and he does set up and knock down a few strawmen in place of their broader populations - identity theory in lieu of physicalism when discussing zombies, causal structuralism instead of broader conceptions of physics when discussing internal natures, quantitative physical models without considering the more qualitative operands of scientific thinking. But this seems more a constraint of book length than philosophical laziness. In the end, this is one of those books I wish could be more like a live conversation with the author. Read this book. Enjoy the philosophy. And begin your panpsychist conversations here.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
2 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Christina
- 10-09-20
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Finally a name to put to my feelings and views of the world. Fun and engaging listen.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Gregala
- 09-22-23
Ultimately unsatisfying
As a one-time philosophy major I've followed the scientific and philosophical study of mind for decades. Pan-psychism is an intuitively attractive approach to the question of whence our consciousness originates, and how widely it may be found. Attempts to explain it away are refuted by the most basic introspection. So the notion that there is no bright line between the conscious and the non-conscious looks promising.
This book does a great job laying out the case that consciousness exists (as if there were any doubt) and that purely materialist explanations seem to fall short. It also summarizes the familiar arguments why dualism is logically incoherent. So far so good.
But the author's attempts to explain what exactly panpsychism holds, and more particularly what its core concept, consciousness, might be is a fail. He doesn't even try. Indeed, the discussion is mainly about what panpsychist philosophers do not contend, and a lot of inside baseball about their quibbles. Worse yet, he proffers several risible fallacies based on wordplay that insult the reader's intelligence. This severely undermines his credibility.
I'm glad I listened, but leave sadly persuaded that the panpsychist emperors are not wearing any clothes, and their enterprise is a house of cards.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Demetrius Walker
- 11-23-19
Pan-Psychism Explained
Goff makes a great case for the marriage of physics with philosophy. Finding the words, science, and data to explain consciousness have been elusive since the beginning of time. Finally a good explanation for not just how, but why consciousness pervades the universe.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
8 people found this helpful